


Cup Runneth Over

by duckiesinaline



Series: Cup Runneth Over [1]
Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: Gen, Immortality, a heaping helping of angst with a little side of hope, gratuitous abuse of political systems, immortal!Graves, riffing off of someone else's AU, some distant future
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-06
Updated: 2017-09-06
Packaged: 2018-12-24 12:14:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,698
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12012513
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/duckiesinaline/pseuds/duckiesinaline
Summary: The first sight he saw was bright, actinic light and Seraphina ...If Seraphina's hair had been a rich sheet of auburn, sleek as a seal's pelt.If the wand she held leveled upon him had been made of hornbeam instead of swamp mayhaw wood.If she had not already been dead for well over 300 years.





	Cup Runneth Over

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kallistob](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kallistob/gifts).
  * Inspired by [The Gift](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/321339) by kallistob. 



> Well, this suddenly happened? *headscratches*
> 
> I honestly wasn't intending to even try to write anything until I go home after the 15th, and even then, I had fully intended to make The Worst & Best the only fic I work on for the time being. But then I started needing more dashing!broody!Graves and made the mistake of browsing Tumblr, and the second link that #Percival Graves brought up was the spine-tingling conjecture of The Gift by kallistob and then suddenly ... this. (Like, I had thought I would have one page, max, and then suddenly 5 hours later there was this.)
> 
> (What you need to know from The Gift to make sense of this story: Grindelwald, as a last "gift" to Percival, cursed him with immortality.)

The first sensation he felt was the heaviness of his own body; the weight of the bones that curled his shoulders forward and hung his head, the torpid stretch of the muscles around his rib cage as it expanded and contracted with each dragging breath.

The first smell he registered was sharp and acrid; like chemicals and ozone, lightning and magic, slinking past nasal passages and tongue to curl, prickly, deep in his throat.

The first sound he heard was the subliminal hum of machinery; muffled fans and electricity, sterile, unvarying.

The first sight he saw was bright, actinic light and Seraphina ...

If Seraphina's hair had been a rich sheet of auburn, sleek as a seal's pelt. If the wand she held leveled upon him had been made of hornbeam instead of swamp mayhaw wood. If she had not already been dead for well over 300 years.

"Percival Graves," she spoke, and the mirage of his old friend finally vanished, the voice just slightly deeper than expected.

He didn't bother responding to the obvious, letting his gaze slide past her.

He remembered the room. Bare concrete and glaring lights, cabinets of equipment tucked discreetly to one side, the metal coffin into which he had been marched at wandpoint. Clinical and unchanged, even in the amount of dust on the nearest surfaces, it could have been mere minutes since he had last closed his eyes from what little evidence he could gather.

It was her companions - their own wands raised in threat - that gave him his first clue as to how much time had passed. One man and one woman, clad in long, nondescript coats and dress slacks and shoes beneath. But the woman held a tablet in her free hand ... or what he assumed was a tablet. For though the devices had already been vanishingly thin before, now it seemed to be composed of nothing more than tangible light, hovering at her fingertips.

Enough time had passed for at least one or two significant technomagical innovations, then. "Have you finally found a way to execute me?" he murmured.

"What?" the almost-Seraphina looked genuinely taken aback. Still young, then, at least to politics - Seraphina had systematically trained herself out of such tells even before she had held the post of President. "No!"

"Then put me back to sleep," Graves said, eyes slipping closed, stretching for the lingering lethargy he could still feel at the ends of his limbs and trying to tease it closer. "There are no more attachments for you to leash me with and I will no longer play someone's personal weapon."

A whisper of cloth, uncertainty in the sound, and then she said, quiet, "Not a weapon, no, but ... what about a shield?"

One sluggish heartbeat, two, and he opened his eyes again to regard the child-woman. Her wand was still raised, but her gaze was entreating over it, filled with a painful hope. Bemusement fought with indifference, before he finally yielded with an echoed, "Shield?"

Her tongue darted out, wetting her lips, before she finally lowered her guard with a snap and raised her chin. "The magical community of the United Coalition of Sol is facing a danger unlike any other before. I am Titania Stalworth, President pro tempore of the Magical North American Federation - "

Grudging concern swept away any last illusions that he could force himself back into hibernation. "Pro tempore?"

Titania bit her lip, gaze falling though her shoulders remained braced. "Yes. The president ... and vice president ... Mr. Graves, someone has figured out what it is that allows magic to exist. And he has also figured out a way to cut it off. Please ... as you have so courageously done for centuries before, I ask of you, one more time, if you would step forward as the Graves have always done, and protect the innocent who cannot protect themselves."

He blinked and blinked again. Even though the curse meant whatever remaining poisons they had used to force him into his suspended state had been cleared away by the time she introduced herself, he felt as if his mind was still only half-revived as he tried to work through all the implications. "I killed the president," he reminded harshly. Buy time, address the most obvious problem first, because oh dear Merlin, God, and stars, was she offering what he thought she was offering ...

Her full lips tightened - not quite a flinch - but when she spoke, she sounded all the more resolute. "That was over sixty years ago, Mr. Graves. We have learned much since then - "

"Not enough. Never enough." He saw the patterns over and over again - and over and over again, people did not listen. He had come to suspect that, perhaps, ancient Cassandra had not been cursed so that her prophecies would never be believed ... it was just human nature, to ignore what it did not want to be true. To think that the old did not have any applicable lessons for the new. That he was a relic, an aberration - 

"It was enough this time. As soon as I was sworn in, I've had access to all the records. They knew why you did it by the year's end ... but the replacement administration couldn't be seen supporting assassination as a method of deposing an elected leader, so they buried you, figuratively and literally. The next few administrations were too afraid to touch such a volatile topic when they were still trying to rebuild the populace's trust in the governing body. Then, the rest were simply too afraid - "

"Because there is incontrovertible proof, now, that the weapon could be turned on them. As I could turn on you, if you don't - "

"Ms. Doughtry," Titania declared, and his breath caught at the Seraphina he could see now in the glint in the child-woman's eyes, the steel of her spine, the will that didn't so much fight through obstacles as simply ignore them altogether in its inexorable march forward. "For official records: I, Titania M. Stalworth, President of the Magical North American Federation, pursuant to the pardon power conferred upon me by the Constitution, do grant a full, free, and absolute pardon unto Percival Graves for all offenses against the North American Federation which he has committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period of September 15, 2394 through April 15, 2395."

A soft chime, and the woman who had stood as still as a soldier behind the president flicked fingers across the tablet and pronounced, "Recorded and submitted. Voiceprint match confirmed and stress analysis passed. Submission has been accepted by Central, Madam President."

Titania's gaze had not wavered from him by so much as a blink. "It's done now, Mr. Graves - the pardon is effective immediately. What President Mallory did to you and yours was unconscionable - I will not be a party to such tactics, no matter how great our need. You are a free man, now, regardless of your decision."

He laughed, because he couldn't think of any other response to this guileless woman who tried to entrap him by setting him free. "'One more time', you said ... and that there is now someone who knows how to strip magic from the universe. You may have thrown away the stick, but you still hold the carrot."

She may have been artless, but she was no fool; she knew exactly what she was offering. "Like I said, I will not be a party to such tactics. I will claim no hold over you but for the loyalty you have always freely given. Whether you help us or not ... if we gain the secret of how this madman is able to do what he does? You have my word that you will be given this knowledge freely if you so wish." Oh, how it made his heart ache for his old friend, when her gaze softened. "Seraphina Picquery was my many-times great-aunt. After her term, she kept a journal that she religiously updated until her dying day. It was passed on to me by my father, when I was but a child. I've nearly memorized it from cover to cover, by now."

He closed his eyes. All the years and events and people in his memory had begun to smear together like paint underwater ... it had been difficult to _want_ to hold onto them when he realized that he would eventually be forced to let them all go, one by one. But the beginning ... the beginning was still clear, back when he had thought he could still have a facsimile of normality. Back when the despair had first begun to take hold. Back when he still had fears and dreams and wishes to confide ... and someone to confide them to.

"I could walk out there," he rasped, "find your madman, and simply present myself as his next victim."

"You could, Mr. Graves," she said, ineffably gentle. "And I would wish you peace, if you did."

Moisture gathered beneath his lids. He squeezed them and let the tears trail down his cheeks. He thought he had given up all hope for such over the centuries, worn down by time from towering peaks into sloping, featureless plains. It shook him to realize how a hollow pit of yearning could still be opened up inside him with just the right words. "As I have served the people in the past," he said, voice cracking beneath the weight of newborn hope, "I will serve them now under you and you alone, President Stalworth."

A touch upon his cheek, brushing the moisture away, and he opened his eyes to see her with her hand still raised and a smile upon her lips. "It will be my honor, Mr. Graves. And please, when there's no one around that needs impressing, I'm Titania. Or just Tania."

_Please, Mr. Graves, we're past the point of needing to impress each other, don't you think? It's just Sera. Or Seraphina, if you must._

He smiled back. The expression felt stiff and unpracticed, but her expression brightened in response, and warmth began to fill the hollow inside. "Percival, then. Or Percy, if you must. And the honor is all mine ... Tania."


End file.
